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THANKSGIVING 



fG FOR P™E; 



A SERMON, 

PREACHED IN THE FIRST CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH, AT 
PITTSFIELD, MASS., OX THE OCCASION OF THE 

NATIONAL AND STATE THANKSGIVING; 

DECEMBER 7, 1865. . . * 



BY , 

,y 



WILLIAM C. RICHAEDS, 

PA8T0B OF THE BAPTIST CHUKCH, PITXSFIELD. 



Victoria concordia crescit. 



NEW YORK : 
SHELDON & COMPANY, 

498 BROADWAY. 

1866. 



THANKSGIVING FOR PEACE 



A SERMON, 

PREACHED IN THE FIRST CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH, AT 
PITTSFIELD; MASS., ON THE OCCASION OF THE 

NATIONAL AND STATE THANKSGIVING; 

DECEMBER 7, 18(55. 



BY 

WILLIAM C. RICHARDS, 

PASTOB or THK BAPTIST CHURCH, PITTSFIBLD. 



Victoria concordia crescit.' 



NEW YORK : 
SHELDON & COMPANY, 

498 BROADWAY. 

1866. 







Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1866, by 
WILLIAM C. RICHARDS, 
in the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the Southern Dis- 
trict of New York. 



CORRESPONDENCE. 



PiTTsriKLD, Dec. 10, 1865. 
Rev. Prof. RicnARUS, 

Very dear Sir : — We, the undersigned, who heard 
your " National Thanksgiving Sermon," on the 7th 
instant, were so impressed with its liberal and conser- 
vative spirit, as to earnestly desii-e that it may be given 
to the people in some permanent form. 

We therefore respectfully request a copy for publi- 
cation. 

THOMAS COLT, H. M. PEIRSON, 

GEO. P. BRTGGS, M. H. WOOD, 

W. R. PLUNKETT, J. D. FRANCIS, 

W. B. RICE, C. V. SPEAR, 

J. L. PECK, E. S. FRANCIS, 

E. B. AYILSON, L. G. BURNELL, 



'PiTTSFiELD, Dec. 15, 1865. 
Gentlemen : 

It cannot be otherwise than gratifying to me to know 
that my views and utterances in my Thanksgiving Ser- 
mon, commend themselves to your cordial approbation. 
With the hope that their extension beyond the imme- 
diate audience to which they were spoken, will contri- 
bute a little to the great wo ". of making the Peace 
which God has given us, an ecpial blessing to the North 
and the South, I cheerfully comply with your request, 
and remain. 

Very truly yours, 

WM. C. RICHARDS. 
Messrs. Trios. Colt, Geo. P. Briggs, and others. 



BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 

A PROCLAMATION. 

Whereas, It has pleased Almighty God, during the year 
•which is now coming to an end, to relieve our beloved country 
from the fearful scourge of civil war, and permit us to secure 
the blessings of peace, unity and harmony, with a great en- 
largement of civil liberty ; 

And whereas, Our Heavenly Father has also, during the 
year, graciously averted from us the calamities of foreign war, 
pestilence and famine, while our granaries are all full of the 
fruits of an abundant season ; 

And whereas, a righteousness exalteth a Nation, while sin 
is a reproach to any people : 

Now, therefore, I, Andrew Johnson, President of the 
United States, do hereby recommend to the people thereof that 
they do set apart and observe the first Thursday of December 
as a day of Thanksgiving to the Creator of the Universe, for 
their deliverance and blessings. 

And I do further recommend that, on that occasion, the 
whole people make confession of our National sins against his 
Infinite goodness, and with one heart and one mind implore the 
Divine guidance in the ways of National virtue and holiness. 

In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and 
caused the seal of the United States to be affixed. 
Done at the City of Washington, this twentieth day of October, 
in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred 
t ^' ^'^ and sixty-five, and of the Independence of the Uni- 
ted States the ninetieth. 
(Signed,) ANDREW JOHNSON. 



THANKSGIVING FOR PEACE. 



'' O COME, let us sing unto the Lord ; let us make a joy- 
ful noise to the Rock of our Salvation. 

''Let us come before His presence with thanksgiving, 
and make a joyful noise unto Him with psalms." 

Psalms xcv. 1, 2. 

The sacred challenge of the inspired Psalm- 
ist comes to us to-day in a double echo. We 
are assembled in this sanctuary in oliedience 
to two proclamations ; one from the Gov- 
ernor of our Commonwealth, and another 
from the Chief Magistrate of the Eepublic ; 
both of which call us, as the summons of the 
Royal Poet called his people of old, to the 
service and sacrifice of Thanksgiving unto 
God. 

Our State Thanksgiving which has hitherto 
concentrated, in its almost immemorial fes- 



6 THANKSGIVING FOR PEACE. 

tival, the quickest and profoimdest emotions 
of our hearts — and which has exalted itself 
from a custom into almost the sanctity of a 
sacred ordinance — is, to-day, blended with a 
National service, of such peculiar dignit}', 
and of such irresistible force of fitness, that, 
in effect, the former is merged and absorbed 
into the latter. We keep indeed both festi- 
vals at once, and Avhile fealty to the Com- 
monwealth, and tidelity to the principles l)e- 
queathed to us by our fathers, forbid us to 
omit the State ordinance, we yet joyfully 
consent to overlay its gifts upon the altar 
with the broader and more special offerings 
of gratitude and praise, due from us as an 
integral part of the great Nation coming up, 
to-day, with Thanksgiving to the Lord. 

Five years have passed aAvay since any 
State of the American Union celebrated its 
annual Thanksgiving, in such circumstances 
of peace and prosperity, as would naturally 



THANKSGIVING FOR PEACE. 7 

inspire the song of praise upon our lips and 
melody in our hearts unto God. Four times 
our own Commonwealth has l)een summoned 
to tliis service, while the clouds of calamity 
hung thickly in the national sky ; and while 
upon all the horizon there was scarcely a ray 
of light to be seen. The din of battle, the 
shock of arms, the "confused noise and o^ar- 
ments rolled in blood," the slaughter of our 
])rothers and sons, and innumerable other 
tokens of the melancholy prevalence of civil 
war within our borders — seemed almost 
mockeries of our successive festivals, making 
of them, to multitudes, times of fasting rather 
than of feasting ; occasions for sorrow rather 
than of song ; and clouding them, even to the 
most favoured and hopeful participant, with 
the shadows of impenetrable gloom. 

1 cannot but remember and recall here, the 
emotions wdth which, in a sister and contigfu- 
ous State, I prepared to obey the call of its 



8 THANKSGIVING FOR PEACE. ^ 

1 

Executive for public Thanksgiving services ' 
four years ago. Then the first fearful sur- 
prise — the awe I may fitly say — of the Na- 
tional calamity was upon all hearts. There | 
was a paralysis of almost every arm of won- i 
ted industry. Looms were idle. The wings | 
of commerce were folded. The strokes of 
labour fell feebly and with many intermissions. 
The only activities were of a strange and 
startling nature. They were the activities of j 
vast and augmenting preparations for war. ' 
The foundry and the forge were aglow with j 
the lurid fires that melted and moulded the [ 
iron for Death's deadly implements. ; 

In these circumstances, the Thanksgiving 
proclamation of 1861, in our Ncav England 
States, and doubtless in others, had, at first, j 
a tone of untimeliness in it. Some asked with 1 
irony, some with bitterness, some with only ^ 
heedlessness — " What have we to be thankful 
for ?" AVithout misgiving, I charged my peo- 



THAAKSGIYIXG FOPv TEACE. V 

pie. ill the words of Neheniiali, " Go 3^0111- 
way ; eat the fat — drink the sweet, and send 
portions unto them for whom nothing is pre- 
pared. For this da}^ is holy unto our God : 
Xeither he ye sorry, for the joy of the Lord is 
your strength."* There were darker clouds 
upon the national sky, on subsequent Thanks- 
giving days, than those whieli infolded the 
annual feast in 18 Gl. Bnt we had l)ecome 
too familiar with their gloom to fear them as 
we did at tirst. And having risen once to 
the grandeur of the occasion, and oflered unto 
(lod Thanksoivino^ in War: reinemberin^: 
His mercies in the midst of judgments ; look- 
ing through the lurid smoke of battle upon 
plentiful harvests ; hearing, in the intervals 
of the sullen l)oom of the cannon, the sweet 
tones of Divine promise — "For a small mo- 
ment have I forsaken thee ; but with great 



* Nehemiah viii, 10. 

2 



10 THANKSGIVING FOR PEACE. 

mercies will I a^ither thee ;"* we were encour- 
aged and strengthened to meet every recnr- 
rence of the festival with renewed coniidence 
in the final success of our cause and in the 
restored favour of Heaven. 

And this day, my hearers, we hold the 
Thanksgiving for Peace. Peace is the fore- 
most blessing, of that throng of Divine gifts, 
for which we come, to-day, "before His pre- 
sence with Thanksgiving, and make a jo^^ful 
noise unto Him with psalms." 

With a noble fitness our Chief Magistrate 
calls upon the Nation to thank God ioY Peace. 
I am glad that he did not su])stitute for this 
sweet, this significant, this pregnant, this all- 
embracing word — that other word — which 
perhaps a less thoughtful, less gentle, less 
catholic mind w^ould have seized upon as the 
watchword of the great National Thanksgiving 



* Isaiah, liv, 7. 



THANKSGIVING FOR TEACE. 11 

sumiiioiis : I mean the word Victory. I say, 
I am glad the President did not su1)stitute 
Vk'tori/ for Peace in his prochnnation. He 
might have done this and onr ])eantiful flag, 
with its stars and stripes everywhere weaving 
in the breeze, wonhl have jnstiiied the w^ord. 
TJie dispersion of the rebel armies ; the hn- 
miliation of their proud and skillful leaders ; 
the surreiuler of their strongholds ; the ur- 
gency of their chief men in their pleas for the 
Executive Pardon ; the restoration of Federal 
authority in courts and citadels, recently 
proud and defiant with Rebellion ; these and 
a thousand other signs would have warranted 
the use of the word. Why, then, am I glad 
it A\'as not used ? Because the Victory which 
has been achieved is more wovtliily expressed, 
and, indeed, only fltly expressed in the sweet 
word Peace. Had we not conquered a Peace, 
we had won no Victory. If the Roman peo- 
ple held, as we are told by the historian, and 



12 THAMCSGIVING FOK PEACE. 

without the influence of Christianity, that 
there coxdd he no victories in civil icar — hoAv 
much more shall we, under the mould ni<r 
power of the gospel, hold that ever}- victoi'y 
of arms Ave obtained over our rel)ellious l)re- 
thren was yet but our melancholy defeat, {is 
much as theirs, until we liad su1:>dued their 
hearts. 

For our sectional victories over their sec- 
tional revolt ; for our arms triumphant over 
their weapons ; it had been mockery — and 
the refinement of it — for the representative 
of our still undivided Nation to call them 
with us to ThanJcsgiving. His call is not to 
Massachusetts in her proud loyalty, any moi-<' 
than to South Carolina in her bitter repent- 
ance ; but to ])oth alike and together ; at the 
common altar of Naticmal sacrifice, to give 
thanks unto Him, whose arm hath gotten Him 
the Victory — not for Massachusetts and not 
over Carolina ; ])ut for them both as parts of 



THANKSGIVING FOR PEACE. 13 

the J2:rcat and iindissovered league of States, 
that but yesterday seemed about to be dis- 
solved in blood ; ])ut, to-day, is l)y that very 
blood — a solvent no more, but a cement — 
compacted into a unity before impracticable. 
Had the call l)een to Thankso'ivino; for 
Victor}', instead of Peace, hoAv sadly marred 
would not the people's compliance with it 
have appeared ! At first we think, perhaps, 
that there could have been no imperfection, 
no dinmess on the glory of New England's 
votive offerings unto God at this hour. She 
had sighed and longed and prayed and toiled 
and sacrificed and bled for Victory. While 
the Rebellion w^as erect and defiant and inso- 
lent, the thirst for victory, for the red trophy 
of conquest, for the humbling of a proud foe, 
for the degradation of a false standard and a 
usurping banner, for the retributive punish- 
ment of the begettors and abettors of Treason 
— the thirst for these things, though in a 



14 THANKSC4IVING FOR PEACE. 

sense sanguinary, did not seem to be alto- 
gotlier unreasonable. Yet, liad it been, the 
real and not the seeming, the deep and not 
the superficial sentiment of the heart of New 
England — had there been beneath it all no 
profounder, no purer, no more patriotic and 
philanthropic purpose and prayer — we must 
have been convicted, my hearers, of putting 
an estimate on triumphs in civil strife which 
the unchristian pulilic sentiment of Rome 
scorned. But even New England — the l)lood 
of so many of whose gallant sons has reddened 
the soil, and tinged the streams of Southern 
battle fields — would not have given thanks to 
God, to-day, for mere physical victories, 
however many or magnificent they might 
have been ; if dominant in all, and over all 
the sounds of loyal victory, there were not, 
swelling upon every breeze, and echoing from 
the beetling cliffs of ocean, and the bluffs of 
mighty rivers, North, South, East and West, 



THANKSGIVING FOR PEACE. 15 

the heavenly pa?ans of Peace. It is for Peace, 
and not for Victoiy, that the heart of New 
Enghmd is thankfnl to-day. The mother 
whose nol)le boy fell in the battle ; the grej- 
haired sire who has no son left to take his 
place, becanse his conntry needed him for a, 
sacrifice ; even these are breathing out of 
their swelling, sobbing bosoms, not the fiery, 
feverish word Victory, l)ut the sweet, sooth- 
ing, healing word — Peace ! 

But if even in our loyal States, a thanks- 
giving for mere Victory must have been a 
blemished and distorted offerino^ — as savour- 
ing to multitudes of the spirit of Moloch and 
not of the Messiah — what shall I say of the 
hollow mockeries of compliance with the 
Thanksgiving call, which would be now 
enacting solemn falsehoods and sacred farces 
in the sanctuaries of the people who were, 
but a few months ago, englamoured with the 
spells of Secession and the hope of successful 



16 THANKSGIVING FOR PEACE. 

Revolution ! Where, in iill the region over 
whieh the flag of revolt waved, would a 
Thankso'ivino: for Vietory — I mean for th(^ 
triumph of Northern over Southern foree — 
have been anything hut a lie ? For would it 
not have been the exultation of the van- 
quished over their defeat ; their rejoicing in 
what their pride must count as their shame ! 
There could have been no Thankso^ivino- t()- 
day, in Virginia, in Carolina, in Georgia — 
amid the ruins of desolated towns, the black- 
ened skeletons of once fair foiests, the ravaged 
fields Avhere ahvays plenty smiled, the wrecks 
of a luxurious prosperity, and the still pre- 
sent signs of the conqueror's power and au- 
thority. It needed that tlie form of Victoiy 
should be disguised at least, with the beau- 
tiful habiliments of Peace^ in order that the 
subdued and yet spirited sons of the Soutli 
should come to the festival of the Nation with 
any other aspect and spirit than that of sul- 



TIIANKSGIYJXG FOR PEACE. 17 

leiiiioss and shame. And, my hearers, if there 
is not more in the national heart and inten- 
tion, than a mere disgnising of Victory's 
proud form in the k)Yely vestments of Peace ; 
it' the sul)stituti()n is seeming and not i^eal, 
there Avill l)e still Aictory, perhaps, but not, 
in perpetuity, that whicli makes victory of 
value — aniity, brotherhood, charity ! 

Thanks o^i vino: for Peace ! This is the re- 
quisition ; this th<? sweet, welcome, easy duty 
of the day and the hour. It excludes no part 
of the regenerated and delivered land ; no 
State of all the great family so recently 
plunged in the wild turmoil and turbulence 
of a strife, which, for deadly earnestness and 
deadly peril to lioth parties, had never a 
parallel in history. Before the 1)1 esse d image 
of Peace which has ])een set up at the Xational 
Capital, there is no reason ^vhy every lately 
revolted State shall not come and, with every 
other loyal State, cast down its pledge of 



18 THANKSGIVING FOR PEACE. 

fidelity and lift up its song of Th{inksgivin<r 
to God. In the Tluinksgiving for Peace all 
partizan wranglings may titly l)e hushed. 
Although months have elapsed shiee Peac(^ 
was virtually achieved — its puhlic proclama- 
tion has waited for the utterance of Nationtd 
Praise ; that the clamours of section and party 
prejudice might have time to rage and swell 
and diminish, until now they should utterly 
die away, while the universal song of Thanks- 
giving soars heavenward from the National 
heart. 

Peace has returned to our land. The grim 
visage of war is shrinking into the shadows 
of the past. The soldier is laying aside his 
arms and resuming the implements of indus- 
try. The forge is taxed no longer, day and 
night alike, with a demand for deadly weaj)- 
ons. Already the spades which heaved the 
soil into ominous l)illows of wrath, are level- 
ling the mounds for the happ}' toil of the hus- 



THANKSGIVING FOR PEACE. 19 

1)1111 (Imaii. Arsenals are no longer the hope 
of the conntiy. Academies resnme their as- 
eenclancy. Military tribunals ^deld up their 
usurped functions to the civil courts, and the 
scales of justice hang no longer from the 
glittering, but unstable sword-hilt. Forts, if 
not dismantled — as prudence disallows — 
swarm no longer with crowded garrisons. 
Iiattle-ships are transformed into merchant- 
men. Our great railways are blocked no 
longer with troops and munitions of War ; 
))ut rapidly exchange the generous produce 
of the teeming fields and prairies of the West, 
for the ingenious and useful products of the 
busy looms and workshops of the East. 

The familiarity of the National mind with 
A\ holesale carnage and havoc is receding into 
that natural and wholesome horror of blood, 
from Avhich it was violently dragged forth by 
,tierce l^attles and slaughters, whose distinc- 
tive names are burdensome, for their niulti- 



20 TIIANK.SGIVIXG FOR PEACP:. 

tilde, to the memory. Eventliiiig around 
us speaks the promise of a Xational prospe- 
rity, which may have simuhitioiis, indeed, in 
a time of War, Initcan l)e su])stantial only in 
a time of Peace. 

If to us of the loyal States, never impoY- 
erished by the progress of the War, hut on 
the contrary displaying, in the face of a gi- 
gantic Terror — threatening our political and 
social ruin, a constantly recuperative energy, 
amazing to the nations of Europe and hardly 
less so to ourselves ; if to us, upon Avhom the 
dread burden of War has pressed with com- 
paratively little force, the advent of Peace 
Avith all her attendant train of blessings, is an 
occasion for ardent thanksgiving — how can it 
l)e less to the people whom the War has re- 
duced from a proud alHuence to almost 
penur}^, and who have seen — in tlie track of 
the uidiindered march of an avenging Gov- 
ernment — not onlv their estates despoiled, 



THAXKSGIYING FOR PEACE. 21 

their possessions consumed, their strength 
wasted, their armies overwhehned, but be- 
yond these disasters — their cherished insti- 
tutions and ideas shattered and dissipated in 
the tempest, until they rest from a hopeless 
conflict enfeebled and indeed exhausted. 
Must not Peace be welcome to them ? They 
might indeed scorn it at the hands of an alien 
foe, though his foot were upon their necks ! 
We should expect this from those in whose 
veins our blood courses, and whom we could 
not afl^ord to despise in the field. But at the 
hands of the Nation, of which they and we 
are equally integers, why should they not 
take the beautiful olive branch, already blos- 
somed thickly with the signs of happier days, 
and press it to their Avan lips with fervent 
praises to God ! 

For Peace shall be even more to them than 
to us — if heartily embraced and thoroughly 

appreciated. To us it will bring renewed 
3 



22 THANKSGIVING FOR PEACE. 

and, it may be, augmented prosperity. To 
them it will be not a progress only, bnt a new 
birth ; not an enhancement of good alone, 
bnt a new inheritance. Under the sway of 
the new Angel ef Peace — the social life, the 
political condition, the industrial resources, 
the very soil of the beautiful and generous 
southern clime will iind regeneration and 
bourgeon into aspects and products of l)eauty 
and wealth, which we of this less genial clime 
may yet, with brotherly kindness come to 
envy. 

But I shall disappoint your just expecta- 
tions, and do injustice to this great National 
occasion for Thanksgiving, if I find no other 
reason for it than the restoration of Peace. 

There are, indeed, two other grounds upon 
which, if the service we render to-day needed 
to be justified, I should confidently stand up 
for its vindication. At one of these I shall 
merely glance — assured that the briefest ob- 



THANKSGIVING FOR PEACE. 23 

servation of it will suffice to convince 3^ou 
that it is solid and no quicksand ; no deceit- 
ful mirage merely. 

Our gratitude, as a Nation, is due to Him 
Avbo holds the destiny of kingdoms and dy- 
nasties in His hand, for the 'preservation of 
this Union of States without a flaw. The 
disintegration of the Union, to the extent con- 
templated and so vehemently desired by the 
States recently in revolt, would have been a 
calamity, the measure of Avhich we shall now 
never determine ; but which might, perhaps, 
have been unfolded, to the loyal and dis- 
loyal alike, in the endurance of the inevitable 
political, social and personal misfortunes 
which would have been the only fruits of our 
National dismemberment. In some sense, I 
know, these alleged woes are only conjec- 
tural, l)ut I have, again and again, sought to 
look with strained eyes into the thick gloom 
of Disunion, if haply I might discover there 



24 THANKSGIVING FOR PEACE. 

some fjiiiit promise of good to both, or even 
to one, of the great divorced parties. While 
I did not, indeed, desire to find some such 
sign, I think there were times, in the gloomy 
and weary march of events, when it would 
have given me some sort of comfort to say to 
my burdened heart — "Well poor, troubled 
heart, if the worst comes to the worst, and 
this glorious league of married States is bro- 
ken in violent divorcement — there is yet a 
gleam, a ray perhaps, of promise on the far 
horizon, that may grow into brightness for 
the divided peoples." But I could not dis- 
cern that gleam. All beyond the melancholy 
disruption was dark with the presage and 
presence of disorder and strife. I saw not 
then, any more than I see now, how States 
drifted asunder by conflicting principles and 
policies — till the fierce strain snapped the 
cable that held them together, should there- 
after peacefully and prosperously sail in the 



THANKSGIVING FOR PEACE. 25 

same sea, the jurisdiction of whose waters 
and shores must l)e forever in perplexing 
(piestion, and often in complications of doubt, 
ending only in fierce and bitter and relentless 
antagonisms and strifes — hindering progress 
and imperilling the existence of one or both. 
With the imminence of the c^anyer connected 
with the disjunction of the States — a danger 
circumscribed, to the deliberate judgment of 
multitudes, by no narrower sweep than the 
wild orbit of anarch}^ — the violence such a 
catastrophe w^ould do to the patriotism and 
affection with wdiich loyal hearts cherished 
the Union, devised by the wisdom, framed by 
the toil and cemented by the blood of our 
fathers, was as nothing, in comparison, while 
yet the result was impending as a fearful pos- 
sibility of doom ; but now that the doom is 
averted, hj the Divine interposition, we feel, 
in all its absolute terribleness, the anguish it 
would have cost us to see the beautiful fabric 



26 THANKSGIVING FOR PEACE. 

of American popular government crum1)led 
into fragments, hy the fratricidal strength of 
those to whom its pillars should have been 
more dear than their personal aggrandize- 
ment, more sacred than their fondest ambi- 
tions. Shuddering, as we must, to realize 
the extreme narrowness of our escape from 
ruin, with the overthrow of our National tem- 
ple, we recover our calmness only before the 
altar of Him, Avhose wisdom'and strength and 
grace constituted the trinity of force required 
for the conservation of a Government too ex- 
ceptional and too beneficent, in the history 
of nations, to be jeopardized hy caprice, or 
ambition, without the deep dishonour of those 
who dared the crime, and without our grate- 
ful acknowledgments to Him who prevented 
its dread consummation. 

The third reason I shall offer for our hearty 
observance of this service of gratitude to God 
is the extension and jperfection of our National 



THANKSGIVING FOR PEACE. 27 

Liberty. I use the word perfection in a rela- 
tive rather than in an absolute sense, and as 
applied to the scope, rather than to the qua- 
lity of freedom residting from the great con- 
vulsions of the Union. Without conviction — 
without CA^en the thought — that the extinction 
of American slavery, existing as it did by the 
suffrage of the great Charter of our Federal 
organization, would have been a wise and 
worthy end of an internecine war ; or, in its 
bare accomplishment, a vindication of the 
measures in which such a war had its origin 
on the part of the Government ; I am never- 
theless not only prepared, l)ut profoundl}' 
eager, to " make a joyful noise unto the Rock 
of our Salvation," for the result of Emanci- 
pation, as incidental to the progress of the 
conflict betwixt unconditional loyalty to the. 
Union, and uncompromising hostility to it. 
The logic of events is too resistless to be op- 
posed with mere preferences of judgment as 



28 TIIAXKSGIYIXG FOK PEACE. 

to the manner in which truly gi'and and im- 
measuraljly lofty moral eonsunnnations shall 
be reached. 

The nprooting of Slavery was of this order 
of consnmmations, ' devoutly to be wished' ; 
and in the face of its astonishing achievement, 
all merely judicial scruples as to the doing of 
it assume the aspect of solemn impertinence. 
The ship with the dark flag has gone down 
in the tempest madly evoked for its preser- 
vation from a form of ruin, wdiich existecl, 
perhaps, only in the imagination of those 
whose idolatry of it disturbed their reason. 
They counted its perpetuation as more to be 
desired than the conservation of the Govern- 
ment, which yet held in its Charter all the 
warrants it could boast, or claim, for its con- 
tinuance ; and in their reckless zeal to immo- 
late the Constitution of the United States, 
they brought Slavery, instead, within the sac- 
rificial stroke of the knife and the fire. And 



THANKSGIVING FOR PExiCE. 29 

now over its blood and its consuming corpse, 
liow shall the Nation do less than rejoice with 
trembling, and give unfeigned thanks to God 
for His salvation vouchsafed to us, from the 
peril of a fearful cancer in the body politic — 
which, disguised as it might be, was never 
stripped of its terror, and yet was in such 
close proximity to the life of the Nation, that 
no hand but God's could ply the knife and 
cut the festering death away. 

I am claiming — observe my hearers — that 
the extension of Freedom to the enslaved race 
in the midst of us, is a fit occasion for National 
Thanksofivino^ to God. I do not now think 
of sectional interests, but of universal inte- 
rests. If I did not sincerely believe that the 
people, upon whom the sacrifice of Slavery 
has fallen with the immediate aspect of a 
calamity, and who, from their long association 
with it, and from their general unconscious- 
ness, and inapprehension even, of any social 



30 THANKSGIVING FOR PEACE. 

or moral wrong-doing in maintaining, defend- 
ing and perpetnating it ; if I did not])elieve, 
I repeat, that the hitc shive-owners have fully 
as much reason as any of us — aye vastly more 
than any of us — and not less, hy the least 
whit, than the emancipated slaves them>selves, 
to give thanks to God for the very thing they 
shunned, as the worst of evils and the sad- 
dest of disasters, I should not think it possi- 
ble for this Thanksgiving festival to be in 
any just and broad sense — National. Millions 
of the people of the United States would be 
unable to unite with other millions in the 
recoo:nition of what these latter will doubtless 
most exult in to-day, as ground for National 
praises to our Fathers God — the emancipation 
of all the slaves in our land. But on this 
point I am in no perplexity of mind or con- 
science. The deliverance of the shive-holder 
is as great as that vouchsafed to the slave. 
Both are emancipated. The freedom of the 



TIIAXKSGIVIXG FOR PEACE. 31 

sLive is the freedom of the master. I can well 
appreciate the feeling with which one of the 
hitter class, in Georgia, said to his father — 
jdso a slave-holder — the mornins: when the 
President's finjd decree of Emancipation was 
received, " Icongratulate you, sir, that you and 
I are both freemen now." The father's per- 
ception was not so quick as that of his son, 
hut it needed only the impulsion of the felic- 
itous thought, seconded by a few words of 
explanation, and father and son shook hands 
and looked into one another's faces with smiles 
of unwonted brightness, as they felt together 
that, in Slavery's overthrow, they were en- 
larged. And while I cannot flatter myself, 
or you, with the idea that a majority of the 
late slave-masters of the South have reached 
the Pisgah of a vision, so l)road and fair as 
at I have alluded to, I do l)elieve that thou- 
sands are climbing to it, and that ere long the 
people of the South will atone for any lack 



32 THANKSf4IVING FOR PEACE. 

of fervour in their gratitude to-dfiy for Emau- 
cipatiou, by originating a special Thanks- 
giving ordinance — for themselves, their chil- 
dren, and their children's children to honour. 
The masters who held slaves were them- 
selves slaves to the system of servitude and 
its sad entail of evils upon the white class. 
In the atmosphere of this unconscious servi- 
tude, Agriculture, Industrial Arts and Edu- 
cation were all dwarfed and stunted. Labour, 
which is the vitality of a people, was dispar- 
aged and dishonoured 1)}^ Slavery. The slave 
agriculture was slovenl^^ and exhaustive to 
the land. The childhood of the white class 
was degraded, intellectually, by association 
with the slave children. Without pressing 
this view further, and without defining the 
injustice of Slavery to the subjects of it, which 
is foreign to my point, I insist that in an eco- 
nomical and social — not to say moral — sense, 
the extinction of Slavery will result speedily 



THANKSGIVING FOR TEACE. 33 

to the vast benefit of those who may now sul- 
lenly, or more patiently, cleplore the dispensa- 
tion of Providence which has broken the yoke 
from the neck of the black man. A ncAV in- 
dustry, new processes of competitive agri- 
culture, labour the law of the white man as 
well as of the black man, and compensation 
according to toil ; these alone will prove 
grand and rapid regenerating forces in the 
now paralyzed and desolated South ; and we 
shall see the wilderness blossom as the rose, 
and the people of that afflcted region w^ill 
have appointed to them " beauty for ashes, 
the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of 
{)raise for the spirit of heaviness." 

For this Jubilee Year then to the Southern 
land and its population, white and black alike, 
the National heart should pour out, to-day, its 
thankfulness to the Eock of our Salvation ; 
the pulse and throb of the Southern heart 
answering to the pulse and throb of the North- 



34 THANKSGIVING FOR TEACE. 

erii heart ; while the clanking of chains is a 
sound dying away into the preludes of the 
new song of universal liberty. 

I do not forget, to-day, because I fail spe- 
cially to dwell upon them, those reasons for 
profound gratitude to Almighty God, which 
are, from their constant recurrence, not extra- 
ordinary, like those I have indicated. The 
common blessings vouchsafed to us in the al- 
ternation of the seasons, with their healthful 
w^ork and happy wages for it, wdth their out 
of door charms and their home delights, are, 
like ten thousand other gifts of our beneficent 
and loving Father, the staple themes of our 
thanksgiving. Surely, we are not less thank- 
ful for them, to-day, because they are for a 
season overshadowed by the grander gifts 
which make the year an Annus JSIirabiUs in 
our National Annals. We look up now to 
the great gift of Peace, as the pilgrim in the 
Alps lifts his eye to the sky-piercing Matter- 



THA^NKSGIYING FOR PEACE. 35 

horn ; its wondrous peak supplanting a little 
while all less, all lower objocts in his regard. 
To that summit of our national elevation — 
which we call Peace, we lift our eyes to-day. 
We send our sonofs thitherward. We shout 
our anthems that the strain may soar and soar 
till that peak shall "catch the flying joy," 
and " roll the rapturous hosanna round." 

This sermon would have an inexcusable im- 
perfection in it (as I know it has other 
imperfections, which I trust in your generosity 
to hold excusable ;) — if I should close it with- 
out attempting to indicate some of the ways 
in which true thankfulness to God will reveal 
itself, not in the National voice alone, but in 
the National conduct. 

The times are confessedly momentous. 
Every day may be shaping grand historical 
events. Every day is, indeed, maturing to 
perfect ripeness the fruit of the conflict ; or 
else hastening within its heart the melancholy 



36 THANKSGIVING FOR PEACE. 

processes of blight tind decay. And the peo- 
ple are individually responsi])le for the cha- 
racter of National counsels and acts, mediately 
if not immediately. It is, therefore, of vast 
moment, that we should understand our re- 
sponsibility, and with right judgment and 
right action, acquit ourselves of it right man- 
fully. The Peace and restored National Au- 
thority, and the wide extension of Freedom, 
which are the experiences of the Nation, this 
present memorable year, all demand the ex- 
tremest wisdom for their conservation and 
happiest development. 

At the foundation of true National thank- 
fulness to God, as the Rock of our Salvation, 
lies, essentially, a profound sense of His in- 
terposition for us, in the fearful exigencies to 
which we were brought by the Rebellion 
and tlie War. Inseparable from such a con- 
sciousness as this, is the conviction that only 
the hand which saved us can keep us from 



THANKSGIVING FOR PEACE. 37 

falling again and fatally. At such a doctrine 
as this Infidelity and Atheism may sneer. 
Rationalism may smile with ill-concealed 
scorn ; but spiritual Reason and Christian 
Faith, two divinely irradiated principles, 
which will endure when all the sneers and 
cavillinofs of unbelief shall be hushed in eter- 
nal silence, will accept and vitalize the doc- 
trine into duty and obedience. 

The speedy restoration of mutual confi- 
dence between the lately antagonistic sections 
of the Union is the pressing demand of the 
times. To effect this should be the aim of 
every enlightened statesman and of every 
true patriot. Upon the altar of true amity 
all partizan creeds and platforms and preju- 
dices and schemes should be cast and consu- 
med. The clamours of sectionalism should 
die away in fraternal words. In the accom- 
plishment of a result so noble and lofty as this, 
the initiative clearly belongs to the successful 



38 THANKSGIVING TOR PEACE. 

contestant in the now ended conflict. The 
people, humiliated by defeat of every kind, 
physical, political, social and moral ; smart- 
ing with surprising hurts ; bewildered by 
amazing revolutions ; confounded by the col- 
lapse of bubbles which they fondly believed 
were spheres of granite ; impoverished to a 
degiee of which their own serfs never afforded 
an example, and their own generous land no 
type ; awaking only with clouded and reluc- 
tant eyes to the stern conviction that " old 
things are passed away and all things are 
made new " in their condition and destiny ; 
distrusting and often utterly disbelieving the 
T^rofessions of their successful competitors, 
that they desire only the highest good of the 
whole country — knowing no North and no 
South ; dreaming yet, it may be, of impossi- 
ble extrication from the meshes of Fate which 
are about them ; the subdued, broken, disap- 
pointed, discouraged, but yet generous, warm- 



THANKSGIVING FOR PEACE. 39 

hearted, open-handed people of the lately 
revolted regions, should be spared every 
needless pang of fresh bitterness in the waters 
of the full cup poured out to them. It is 
ours, my hearers, it is Massachusetts' privi- 
lege to kill their lingering pride and hate and 
dou])t and defiance, with genuine magnani- 
mity, with Christian kindness, with inco atro- 
vertible proofs that, Slavery being now mori- 
bund and practically out of the way, there 
is actually nothing between Massachusetts 
and Carolina — as the representatives of all the 
loyal and all the returning Commonwealths — 
to hinder the true embrace of sisterly love 
and fellowship. 

The exercise of magnanimity is not within 
the power of the South. This high privilege 
belongs to the North. I do not mean that the 
people of the South cannot be generous. I 
mean only, that now they have nothing to 
give but their consent to what being inevi- 



40 THANKSGIVING FOR TEACE. 

table, they may allow with cheerfulness or 
suUenness, with high resolves to make the 
best of it, or stolid inaction as sufferers, ac- 
cording to the spirit and temper of those who 
have the power of the majority to press what- 
soever cup they will to the lips of the prone. 

The people of the South can be won by 
kindness. The people of the North can be 
exalted, ennobled, enriched by the exercise 
of kindness — than which God never ordained 
an easier and happier method of a people's 
aggrandizement. Henceforward, indeed, there 
is but one people beneath the stars and the 
stripes. The mad dream of another flag has 
proved a baseless vision. The stars are not 
for one section and the stripes for another ; 
butf'both for all — the stars to multiply and 
not the stripes. 

We shall not be truly grateful to God 
in this great epoch of deliverance, my hear- 
ers, if we do not hold our judgment and 



THANKSGIVING FOR PEACE. 41 

our impulses iu the stroug leash of moclera- 
tiou, while we discuss aucl determine the 
irrave matters ori^'inated by the new order of 
things. We are unquestionably debtors to 
the emancipated people of this country, to 
the whole extent of the persistence and 
vehemence with which we have desired their 
freedom. A faithful discharge of our debt 
to them will well attest the sincerity of our 
gratitude to the Giver of Liberty. Our ef- 
forts, our contributions, in their behalf, for 
the amelioration of their suflerings in the 
strange vicissitudes of sudden independence, 
for their education, cultivation and conver- 
sion, are all the legitimate sequences of our 
hopes and prayers for their enlargement. 

But even in this direction, there is need of 
earnest and intelligent discrimination, lest 
our impulses rush far beyond the limit of 
judicious interference for them. The freed- 
men must, for obvious reasons, abide in the 



42 THANKSGIVING FOR PEACE. 

South, either with or without the white chiss 
which recently held them in Slavery. Yon 
and I, and all thoughtful men, deprecate the 
idea of a separate, isolated community of 
colour. If, then, the white and coloured classes 
are to dwell together, it is absolutely vain 
for outside legislation to fix and define the 
precise terms of their relationship. It is sa- 
fer to entrust these grave questions to the 
statesmanship and to the conscience of the 
Southern people — who being obliged to ad- 
just themselves to the new^ order of social 
conditions, will not blindly override and op- 
press those who must yet do their hard labour 
for them. Moreover, I am persuaded that 
there is a conscience in the South, which l)e- 
ino' now unl^ound from the o^reen withs of an 
almost irresponsible power over the slaves, 
will rise up and assert itself in just require- 
ments and judicious regulations for the 
freedmen. 



TIIANKSGIVIXG FOR PEACE. 43 

\ What we have to do at the North, is to 
co-operate Avith the y^t crippled Southern 
people, in repairing the immeasurable damage 
they have sustained in their vain uprising 
against the Union, and by the gentleness of 
our spirit convince them of the true greatness 
of our social and political and moral status, 
that they may copy all its excellencies, and 
excel if they can, all the proudest develop- 
ments of its worth and wisdom we have yet 
realized. 

"Our whole country" is henceforth the 
true watchword of our lips and oar hearts, 
and if we mean less than this to-day, our 
Thankso^ivius: must be marred. There will 
be discordant notes in its melody — which 
will gravitate it downward, iustead of waft- 
ing it upward to Heaven. 

Let us, my hearers, go forward, in our ima- 
gination, forward a whole decade — until we 
reach Thanksgiving Day in 1875. Some of 



44 TII.VKKSGIVING FOR PEACE. 

US will never see that day with other eyes 
than those of imagination. Happy, I think, 
will be those e3'es that physically behold, 
and those ears that physically hear, the scenes 
and sounds of that not far distant day. If 
the beneficent Father whom we worship, ac- 
cepts the National service we bring, to-day, 
to His altars — and He will accept it if we are 
true patriots, true philanthropists and true 
Christians, — then, upon this anniversary in 
1875, there will stretch " from Eastern coast 
to Western," a glorious league oi Forty mar- 
ried States^ the basis of whose magnificent 
prosperity will be universal Liberty — under 
the aegis of which no privileged class will op- 
press or wrongfully restrain another class ; 
but all will have their rights before the law 
and before God. To all orders of the people, 
to its forty millions of minds, the blessings 
of Education will l)e accessible, and even ob- 
trusive, so that " he who runs mav read." 



THANKSGIVING FOR PEACE. 45 

The gre^it ocejiiis, and the multitudinous 
seas and harbours of the world will be whi- 
tened with the sails of our commerce. The 
metals and the co.ds, from the mines and the 
measures of our great mineral storehouses, 
will help to vitalize and adorn the industry 
of all nations. The vast and fertile plains 
and prairies of the West and South Avill choke 
the granaries of Europe with food for its hun- 
gry masses, and tire lier looms with staples 
for clothing her sons and daughters. Science, 
never idle, will have done in a decade of 
years, the marvels which before had no par- 
allel in a decade of centuries. She will have 
reticulated the Western Continent with the 
iron Aveb, every libre of which is a filament of 
far reaching thought and speech. She will 
have linked the i>reat seas too-ether with 
bands of steel. She will have lighted our 
cities, our highways, our coasts, with car])()n 
or metallic suns — almost literally fulfilling 
the inspired prediction, ''- For there is nothing 
5 



46 THANKl^GIVLXG FOK PEACE. 

bid which shall not hv nianit'ested."* She 
will have controlled the subtle and myste- 
I'ions sisterhood of unseen forces — transform- 
ing them into one another, and by their agency ! 
combining the elements with a wondrous skill i 
for the benefit of man. All this will she \ 
have done, and more : but most of all, she ] 
will have revealed to us (iod. in earth and i 
sea and sky and air. (iod only wise, iiod only 
great. God only to he worshipped witli per- 
petual Thanksgiving. I 
On that Thanksgiving Day. if any of us, i 
my hearers, may not look forth upon the de- j 
velopment 1 have imagined : may it be ours | 
to take part in a grander and loftier service j 
of Praise than will ever send its echoes Hying I 
from spire to spire, from hill top to hill tO}), i 
on this round earth -even iri the perpetual ■ 
festival of T h an kssfi vino- before the Throne of ] 
God and the Lamb, in which all whom the Son j 
has made free b}^ His blood, shall ha^e part . 
" with joy unspeakable and full of glory.'' t 
* *Mark iv. 22 (\' 



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